At worn-out Penn State, relief, then time to move on
Students walks in front of the Old Main building on the Penn State campus on Nov. 11, 2011, in State College, Pa.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – All of the five TVs in Bill Pickle's Tap Room are tuned into the news. The verdict is in for the former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case.
The streets are quiet. It is the end of the first summer session at Penn State and the school year hubbub of the Big Ten University has waned, but the tap room is packed.
"Turn it off! Audio!" The whole bar screams at the bartenders, insisting they turn off the music and turn up the volume on the TVs.
The bar erupts in cheers as they announce former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been found guilty on 45 of 48 counts of child sexual abuse involving 10 victims.
The case rattled the Penn State community starting last November and led to the firing of a Penn State icon — long-time head football coach Joe Paterno.
The jury deliberated for two days before reaching the verdict late Friday night. Eight of the alleged victims testified during the seven-day trial providing often wrenching accounts of abuse, ranging from fondling to forced oral sex and sodomy.
"Everything that this man has put the community, college and especially the victims through - I think any other verdict would be unfathomable," says alumni Audrey Leonard, 22, from Oakton, Va.
This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.